NY gun control law likely to survive repeal effort

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The campaign to repeal the state's new gun control law faces daunting odds, but that's not deterring legislators who are drawing up a bill to do just that.

"For a long time, I've felt that if you don't try, you'll never succeed," Sen. William Larkin, R-Cornwall, said on Tuesday. Larkin, who said he doesn't own a gun, has a pro-repeal petition on his Senate website signed by 9,600 gun rights supporters.

"Ninety-nine percent of those people who have signed that petition are New York residents, and more than 50 percent live in my district," Larkin said.

Sen. Kathy Marchione, a Saratoga County Republican, has a separate online petition with more than 118,000 signatures.

Advertisement

"We are taking our time because we'd like to avoid mistakes," Marchione said.

She said the bill to repeal "unconstitutional" sections of the law pertaining to gun ownership and registration still is being worked on and that she won't be seeking co-sponsors until it's ready to go.

"I believe in measuring twice and cutting once," Marchione said.

As for her petition, "we didn't think it would go viral so quickly and that there would be so many people who would be interested," Marchione said.

Marchione, who has been in office for less than a month, spoke after Senate Majority Coalition co-leader Dean Skelos, a Nassau County Republican who voted in favor of the state's new gun control bill, expressed skepticism that a repeal bill would come up for a vote in the Senate.

"The reality is, the Assembly would never pass it," Skelos said on Tuesday. "The governor would never (sign) it. So I think we move on now to other issues."

The Assembly is overwhelmingly Democratic, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the driving force behind the new gun control law, is a Democrat.

Skelos noted that under the Senate Majority Coalition's new rules, both he and Senate Independent Democratic Conference leader Jeff Klein, D-Bronx, an outspoken supporter of gun control, must agree to allow a bill to get on the "active list" and be eligible for a vote.

Unlike other states, New York does not have an "initiative and referendum" law that lets voters decide public policy or force the Legislature to bring a bill up for a vote. That means the final decision about which bills are voted on rests with the legislative majority leaders -- or the governor, as Cuomo proved with the gun control bill when he decided to pressure the Senate to act in the space of one day.

When the bill was rushed to approval on Jan. 14 --exactly a month after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. -- more than half of the 30 Republican state senators voted against it. The bill passed, 43-18, with no Democrats voting against it. The Assembly passed the bill, 104-43, the following day, and Cuomo signed it immediately.

Marchione said she hoped to soon begin circulating the repeal bill to potential co-sponsors. A spokesman for Sen. James Seward R-Milford, who has a Remington Arms factory in his district, said Seward "will be going on that bill."

"These reactionary laws force new, onerous regulations on those who meticulously obey the law and infringe on Second Amendment rights," a statement on Seward's website reads. " ... Further impeding the rights of law-abiding citizens does nothing to confront gun violence."

Other legislators also have posted statements on their websites in opposition to the bill dubbed the Secure Ammunition and Firearms (SAFE) Act.

"Moscow would be proud of our state Legislature and Executive Chamber, but every New Yorker should be outraged," Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, a Rensselaer County Republican, wrote on his website. An aide McLaughlin on Tuesday said the senator intends to co-sponsor Marchione's bill in the Assembly.

Sens. Tom Libous, R-Broome County, and George Maziarz, R-Niagara County, are endorsing Marchione's petition and linking to it on their websites.

"I will personally deliver these petitions to the governor and legislative leaders," Maziarz pledges.